The Nature of Space and Time

Authors: Garrick R Holmes

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37082/IJIRMPS.v14.i5.233218

Short DOI: https://doi.org/hckfbr

Country: United States

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Abstract: It is generally supposed that the peculiar properties of water belong to the laboratory and to the Earth, and that the interstellar void, being cold, irradiated, and empty, must destroy any delicate molecular arrangement which a liquid might sustain. It is further supposed that the darkness of the night sky is explained by the finite age and expansion of the universe. This paper examines both suppositions together. First, it is shown that liquid water is not one substance but two, a low-density and a high-density form separated by a critical point located experimentally at approximately 210 K and 1000 bar, and that the forms in which water exists throughout interstellar space are the solid analogues of these same two states. The persistence of the substrate in space is established by the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, which delivered water ice preserved beneath an irradiated crust over an interval estimated in billions of years, with an isotopic structure of D/H = 0.98 ± 0.06 per cent measured by two independent instruments. It is then proposed that the strained water-matrix produces the metric itself, the refractive index profile of the lattice under radial strain yielding the Schwarzschild solution and recovering the classical tests of gravitation. Second, a bounded universe is examined in which an absorbing spherical shell surrounds this finite population of stars. Using current estimates for the number of stars in the observable universe (2 x 10^22), the luminosity of an average star (3.8 x 10^26 W), and the radius of the observable universe (4.4 x 10^26 m), the Stefan-Boltzmann law yields an equilibrium temperature of 2.72 K, against a measured cosmic microwave background temperature of 2.725 K, a difference of 0.2 per cent. The predicted sky brightness falls within the measured range of the extragalactic background light. No conclusions are drawn; the calculations are offered for evaluation and can be verified by any reader using the toolkit in Appendix B.

Keywords: Water, Two-State Model, Amorphous Ice, Interstellar Medium, Absorbing Boundary, Thermal Equilibrium, Stefan-Boltzmann Law, Cosmic Microwave Background, Analogue Gravity

Paper Id: 233218

Published On: 2026-09-23

Published In: Volume 14, Issue 5, September-October 2026

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